A Different Spin on a New Years’ Resolution

Photograph by Rachel Thompson

There have been several posts this year about being positive and removing toxic people out of your life. While it is certainly sage advise, what concerns me is the way it is presented. There are hundreds of Gifs, memes, etc., stating how you need to immediately get rid of anyone showing toxic thinking no matter what their relationship to you. It also is a very popular (and easy) subject for life coaches to stress. A search for videos uploaded to YouTube on this subject yielded nearly 40,000 results!

Stating the obvious isn’t very eye-opening nor does it lead to incredibly life-altering results. Again, I am not questioning the advice but sometimes those kinds of people are unavoidable. If you are a life coach and you get a toxic client, will you be heeding your own advice? We shouldn’t be asking how to get rid of toxic people in our lives but rather the question should be, “What is it in my life that draws negative people and events to me?” Is there something about me that is attracting this type of  behavior?

Most however, don’t want to ask that question. It is much easier to blame others for our difficulties. Changing our own behavior is difficult and sometimes what we see, we don’t like. But there is nothing wrong with a little self-reflection. In fact, it is really the best way to get toxic people out of your life. If your conversations are positive, uplifting and don’t play into their negativity, they won’t want to hang around. If they do, you can always walk away.

For my New Years’ Resolution, I’m going to approach issues on what changes I can make. What about my actions are contributing to the problem and not the solution. The best way to change is to make the change ourselves. As always, I welcome your comments.

Thank you to Rachel Thompson for the beautiful photo. To find out more about her photography click here